Articles Tagged with ''Explosions''

The Texas Rangers and the McLennan County Sheriff's Department Officials are helping to conduct a criminal investigation into the April 17 explosion in West, Texas that killed 14 people and demolished hundreds of homes.

Overcoming resistance to near-miss reporting: Easily ignored incidents can be key to improving safety performance. Even though a near-miss incident on a job site may cause no injuries or property or equipment damage, it can give a company a heads’ up about a need for early intervention, thereby enabling it to improve its safety performance.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer said this week that the Environment and Public Works Committee she chairs will investigate the devastating West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people – many of them first responders – on April 18^th.

While investigators in West, Texas, sift through the rubble of a fertilizer plant that exploded last week, killing 15 people, safety advocates are calling for stricter government oversight of potentially hazardous sites like that one. The operator of the plant, West Fertilizer Co., did file an emergency response plan update in 2011 with the EPA listing anhydrous ammonia on site, but did not indicate there was a risk of fire or explosion at the plant.

The spectacle of frightened elderly nursing home patients being rescued from debris following last week’s explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant had a jarring affect on many Americans. So did photos of debris where approximately 80 homes once stood, and pictures of an apartment complex that had its windows blasted out by the explosion.

An occupational safety organization says last week’s deadly fertilizer plant explosion in Texas is the result of that state’s anti-regulatory environment. The explosion at the West Fertilizer Company killed 14 people and injured many more.

The West Fertilizer plant that was the site of last week’s devastating explosion and loss of life had at least 50,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia onsite -- yet the site’s operators told the EPA and public safety officials that it posed no risk of fire or explosion, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH).

The West Fertilizer Company facility that exploded in a deadly blast last week had not been inspected by OSHA in at least 10 years, according to advocacy group Public Citizen, which says too many similar facilities operate “with very little oversight” from regulatory agencies.

From a deadly explosion at a TX fertilizer plant to health care workers’ risk of exposure to chemotherapy drugs, here are the top OEHS-related stories as featured on ISHN.com:

An explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas last night powerful enough to cause a magnitude 2.1 earthquake has killed up to 15 people – and possibly more. Waco, Texas police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton said he expects the casualty rate to rise. A number of firefighters are among those still missing after the blast. (Firefighters – including volunteers – were at the plant fighting the blaze when the explosion occurred.)